I don’t know if you just saw O’Reilly’s post-game interview with Trump immediately after the debate. We’re going to have some quotes and maybe some video momentarily. (Here’s video.) But it was a thing of hideous beauty. Whatever you can say about O’Reilly, he’s the same kind of nasty, taunting bully as Trump. He gets Trump and has his number. And it showed.
Trump was tired coming off the two hour debate. He went toe to toe with O’Reilly. But unlike everyone else who’s been on the stage with him, O’Reilly has Trump’s number, knows how to deal with him. A Trump who wasn’t a bit worn down would have handled it better. But he was tired.
This was the first GOP debate where I saw them make Donald Trump bleed. I really don’t know whether he ‘won’ or ‘lost’. I suspect his support is too ingrained at this point to be easily shaken. But this time Rubio and Cruz and mainly the moderators knocked Trump off his stride.
It’s not a matter of catching him in some logical contradiction or baloney answer. That’s happened a hundred times and it’s irrelevant. The issue is that his opponents are sharpening a number of attack lines that are commonsensical, direct and understandable: the scam of Trump University, importing foreign labor for the ‘short season’ at Mar-a-Lago. It’s hard for him to smack people down on these attacks with a single broadside.
I’ve noted this several times today in different contexts. But it’s worth repeating clearly and on its own. Romney, Rubio and a slew of other Republicans are denouncing Donald Trump as someone who cannot be allowed to become President. He’s a danger to the country, a danger to the Republican party, a danger to conservatism. Yet none of these people is willing to rule out supporting him in November. Even Mitt Romney today clearly did not rule out supporting Trump in the fall. That is too big a contradiction to stand. The essence of what people are calling the #NeverTrump hashtag ‘movement’ is that it’s Twitter based, and in the nature of Twitter people can’t be pressed on this elemental question. Rubio is trying to be this ‘movement’s’ leader; but tonight he said he’d support Trump as nominee.
Because of this the #NeverTrump movement will likely soon collapse under the weight of its own ridiculousness.
After TPM’s pioneering work identifying the new metrical form of the Trump attack haiku, readers came through with a more extensive examination of Trump’s work …
It’s a bit hard to judge since CPAC or any conference would be hard pressed to command much media attention in the face of the current implosion of the GOP. But it’s hard not to sense that the diminished prominence of CPAC this year is not part of the more general crack up of the current GOP coalition, elites and establishment versus voters, changing definitions of conservatism, different gatekeepers, etc.
TPM Reader CS …
Having listened to (much) of the debate last night and read your commentary, I am struck by the fact that we seem to have become perfectly comfortable with moderators that are actively, openly, and aggressively trying to undermine a single candidate.
Like I said last night, #NeverTrump is really #EventuallyTrump. In a Kentucky radio interview today, Marco Rubio is forced to admit that #NeverTrump actually only applies for the primaries. Audio here.
I wrote last night that the already trembly #NeverTrump ‘movement’ would soon collapse under the weight of its own ridiculousness. And that is even more clear this afternoon. Mitt Romney appears to be the only actual member of the #NeverTrump ‘movement’. Small movement. Sad!
I haven’t done it in a long time. But over the years, I’ve posted charts or non-graphical updates on what kinds of browsers and operating systems people use to access TPM. So for instance, way back in January 2010 (amazingly, that’s 6 years ago), our browser breakdown was like this.
Firefox: 39.82%
Internet Explorer 29.10%
Safari 21.83%
Chrome 7.17%
Today it is …
Chrome 39.41%
Safari 28.8%
Safari (in-app) 12.48%
Firefox 10.97%
Internet Explorer 5.32%